Database Management for Industrial Process Control
While many computer controlled machines are designed to automatically record data relevant to the performance of the machine, the analysis of this data is generally not automatic. This is especially true for machines which are used to perform a variety of different processes in an industrial environment. Furthermore, the operators who run such machines are rarely assigned to data analysis and database management tasks.
This combination of circumstances tends to cause the discovery of process control problems to be delayed until there is a noticeable degradation in the quality of the product being made or in the process being performed.
The present invention provides a system and method of database management that facilitates the performance of data management and analysis tasks by operators, rather than by the engineers who have normally performed such tasks in the past. In particular, the present invention employs the same easy to use menu driven selection method for selecting a process to be run and for requesting an analysis of the data collected from previous runs of the selected process. At the push of just one or two buttons by the operator, the system of the present invention automatically sorts through the measurement data stored in the system and performs a specified data management task (such as printing a trend chart) on previously recorded data for the process specified by the operator.
As a result, the operator can initiate a data management task either just before or just after running a selected process, using the same menus as he uses for selecting and running the selected process.